The Mummy
| language = English | budget = $80,000,000 USD (estimate) | gross = $415,885,488 (worldwide) | followed_by = The Mummy Returns | website = http://www.themummy.com/ | amg_id = 1:179644 | imdb_id = 0120616 }} The Mummy is a 1999 American film written and directed by Stephen Sommers, starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, with Arnold Vosloo in the title role as the reanimated mummy. The movie features some dialogue in ancient Egyptian language, spoken with the assistance of a professional Egyptologist. It is a loose remake of The Mummy (1932), which starred Boris Karloff in the role. It was followed in 2001 by a sequel, The Mummy Returns and The Mummy: The Animated Series, followed by The Scorpion King in 2002. Another sequel, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is expected in 2008. Universal Studios opened a roller coaster, Revenge of the Mummy, in 2004. The movie and its sequel were novelized by Max Allan Collins. Plot The film begins in 1290 BC. High priest Imhotep (Vosloo) is having an affair with the mistress of King Seti I, Anck-su-namun (Patricia Velasquez). When the king discovers the lovers, Imhotep and his priests flee. Anck-su-namun kills herself, intending for Imhotep to resurrect her. After her burial, Imhotep breaks into her crypt and steals her corpse. He and his priests then flee across the desert to Hamunaptra, the city of the dead, where they commence the resurrection ceremony. However, they are caught by Seti's guards before the ritual can be completed, and her soul is sent back to the Underworld. As a punishment for this sacrilege, Imhotep's priests are mummified alive, and Imhotep himself is forced to endure the curse of Hom Dai: his tongue is cut out, and he is buried alive, wrapped like a mummy, along with a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs. The horror of the ritual is that it grants eternal life, forcing him to endure the agony of his wounds for all time. He is buried under high security, sealed away in a sarcophagus below the statue of the Egyptian god Anubis, and kept under strict surveillance by the Medjai, descendants of Seti's palace guards. If he were ever to be released, the powers that made him immortal would allow him to unleash a wave of destruction and death upon the Earth. Three thousand years later, in 1923, Rick O'Connell (Fraser) is serving as a sergeant in a unit of the French Foreign Legion who have voluntarily journeyed to Hamunaptra in search of the treasure rumored to be stored there. When they reach the fabled city, a group of Arabs attack. When the unit's commanding officer deserts during the battle, Rick is left in charge. Retreating into the city, he runs out of ammunition right before the statue of Anubis. Upon seeing the statue, the attackers flee and Rick is left to walk out of the desert. Unbeknownst to him, the battle was witnessed by the Medjai. Three years later, Cairo librarian and aspiring Egyptologist, Evelyn "Evie" Carnahan (Weisz) and her bumbling brother Jonathan (John Hannah) contact Rick while he is imprisoned. When he reveals that he knows the location of Hamunaptra, Evelyn strikes a deal with the warden to keep him from being hanged. He is then recruited into an expedition that quickly becomes a race against a group of Americans led by the famed Egyptoligist Dr. Allen Chamberlain (Jonathan Hyde) and guided by Beni Gabor (Kevin J. O'Connor), a former Legion Seargent under the command of Rick, who also knows the way to Hamunaptra. Shortly after reaching Hamunaptra, both groups are attacked by the Medjai, led by Ardeth Bey (Oded Fehr). Rather than heed Bey's warning, they continue to excavate in search of the Book of Amon-Ra, a golden book capable of taking life away. The team of Americans discover a wooden chest under the statue of Anubis adorned with a curse. Skeptical, Chamberlain opens the lid, just after Beni scrambles out shouting, "Beware of the curse! Beware!". When the dust clears, they find the Book of the Dead, accompanied by several canopic jars. Evelyn takes the book and reads a page aloud, unintentionally awakening Imhotep. The mummy promptly begins sucking out the life force and thus, killing Chamberlain and his colleagues who opened the box. Beni survives a meeting with Imhotep by pledging allegiance to him and helps him track down the remaining Americans. Imhotep eventually brings the Ten Plagues upon Egypt and captures Evelyn, intending to use her to resurrect his long-dead lover, Anck-su-namun. Rick and Jonathan rescue Evelyn and, after an intensive battle with Imhotep's mummies, thwart his resurrection attempts. Johnathan reads from the Book of Amon-Ra, which Rick assumed would kill Imhotep. Imhotep thinks he has failed to do anything, but Johnathan in fact took away Imhotep's immortality, and Rick kills him. As they are leaving, Beni falls behind to plunder the treasures of the lost city and is trapped by a swarm of flesh-eating scarabs. They surround him and kill him as his torch flame goes out. The heroes escape and ride off into the sunset on a pair of camels, unaware that their saddlebags are packed with the treasures that Beni looted earlier. Cast ) and Jonathan Carnahan (John Hannah)]] Production Origins as Evelyn.]] In 1992, producer James Jacks decided to update the original Mummy film for the 1990s. Universal Studios gave him the go-ahead but only if he kept the budget around $10 million. The producer remembers that the studio "essentially wanted a low-budget horror franchise." He brought horror filmmaker/writer Clive Barker on-board to direct. Barker’s vision was quite violent and gory with the story revolving around a man who runs a contemporary museum and turns out to be a cultist trying to reanimate mummies. Jacks recalls that Barker's take was "dark, sexual and filled with mysticism." After several meetings, Barker and Universal lost interest and parted company. Filmmaker George A. Romero was brought in with a vision of a zombie-style horror movie similar to Night of the Living Dead, but this was considered too scary by Jacks and the studio who wanted a more accessible picture. Joe Dante was the next choice, increasing the budget for his idea of Daniel Day-Lewis as a brooding Mummy. This version (co-written by John Sayles) was set in contemporary times and focused on the notion of reincarnation. It came close to being made with some elements, like the flesh-eating scarabs, making it to the final product. However, at that point, the studio wanted a film with a budget of $15 million and nixed Dante’s version. Soon after, Mick Garris was attached to direct but eventually left the project. Then, writer/director Stephen Sommers called Jacks in 1997 with his vision "as a kind of Indiana Jones or Jason and the Argonauts with the mummy as the creature giving the hero a hard time." He had wanted to make a Mummy film since 1993 but other writers or directors were always attached. Finally, he got his window of opportunity and pitched his idea to the studio with an 18-page treatment. Universal liked this idea so much that they approved the concept and increased the budget from $15 million to $80 million. Casting Jacks offered the role of Rick O'Connell to Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck but they either weren't interested or couldn't fit it into their respective schedules. Jacks and Sommers were impressed with the money that George of the Jungle was making at the box office and cast Brendan Fraser as a result. The actor understood that his character "doesn't take himself too seriously, otherwise the audience can't go on that journey with him." Rachel Weisz was not a big fan of horror films but did not see this film as such. As she said in an interview, "It's hokum, a comic book world." South African stage actor Arnold Vosloo understood the approach that Sommers was going for in his screenplay but only agreed to take on the role of Imhotep "if I could do it absolutely straight. From Imhotep's point of view, this is a skewed version of Romeo and Juliet." Principal photography Filming began in Marrakech, Morocco (doubling for 1925 Cairo) on May 4, 1998 and lasted 17 weeks, filming in the Sahara desert (where the ruins of Hamunaptra were built) outside the small town of Erfoud in blazing 130 degree heat and in the United Kingdom before completing on August 29, 1998. Fortunately, the production's medical team created a drink that the cast and crew had to consume every two hours to avoid severe dehydration. In addition to the heat, sandstorms were also a daily inconvenience. Snakes, spiders and scorpions were reportedly a problem and many crew members had to be airlifted out after being bitten. Brendan Fraser nearly died during a scene where his character is hung. Weisz remembers, "He stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated." Production Designer Allan Cameron found a dormant volcano near Erfoud where the entire set for Hamunaptra could be constructed. Sommers liked the location because "A city hidden in the crater of an extinct volcano made perfect sense. Out in the middle of the desert you would never see it. You would never think of entering the crater unless you knew what was inside that volcano." A survey of the volcano was conducted so that the dimensions that an accurate model and scale models of the columns and statues could be replicated back at Shepperton Studios where all of the scenes involving the underground passageways of the City of the Dead were shot. These sets took 16 weeks to build with columns being made out of fiberglass covering an interior metal structure rigged with special effects inside and then they were destroyed on camera for the climactic scene. Another large set was constructed in the U.K. on the dockyard at Chatham which doubled for the Giza Port on the River Nile. This set was 600 feet in length and featured "a steam train, an Ajax traction engine, three cranes, an open two-horse carriage, four horse-drawn carts, five dressing horses and grooms, nine pack donkeys and mules, as well as market stalls, Arab-clad vendors and room for 300 costumed extras." The dialogue in Ancient Egyptian in both The Mummy and its sequel, The Mummy Returns, were "reconstructed" by the Egyptologist Stuart Tyson Smith, who also did similar work for Stargate, in order to make the language more speakable (in hieroglyphics vowels are not written so it is unknown how the language was pronounced). The writers named the character Ardeth Bay after the Mummy from the 1932 original. Minor changes were made from the original script by Stephen Sommers. Evelyn Carnavon was renamed Carnahan, and the beginning narration, originally to be spoken by Imhotep, was changed to Ardeth Bey when it was realized that Imhotep does not speak English. Soundtrack link | Last album = | This album = | Next album = }} Track listing # Imhotep 4:20 # The Sarcophagus 2:17 # Tauger Attack 2:23 # Giza Port 2:01 # Night Boarders 4:08 # The Caravan 2:52 # Camel Race 3:26 # The Crypt 2:26 # Mumia Attack 2:19 # Discoveries 3:41 # My Favorite Plague 3:59 # Crowd Control 3:12 # Rebirth 8:33 # The Mummy 6:19 # The Sand Volcano 5:41 Special Effects The filmmakers wanted a new look for the Mummy so that they would avoid comparisons to past movies. John Andrew Berton, Jr., Industrial Light & Magic's Visual Effects Supervisor on The Mummy, started developing the look three months before filming started. He said that they wanted the Mummy "to be mean, tough, nasty, something that had never been seen by audiences before." Berton used motion capture in order to achieve "a menacing and very realistic Mummy." Specific photography was conducted on actor Arnold Vosloo so that the special effects people could see exactly how he moved and replicate it. To create the Mummy, Berton used a combination of live action and computer graphics. Then, he matched the digital prosthetic make-up pieces on Vosloo's face during filming. Berton said, "When you see his film image, that’s him. When he turns his head and half of his face is missing and you can see right through on to his teeth, that’s really his face. And that’s why it was so hard to do." Make-Up Effects Supervisor Nick Dudman produced the physical creature effects in the film and this included three-dimensional make-up and prosthetics. He also designed all of the animatronic effects as well. Reception On its opening weekend, the film grossed a total of $43,369,635 in 3,210 theaters. As of November 29 2006, the film has grossed a total of $415,885,488 worldwide (Domestic: $155,385,488; Foreign: $260,500,000). In the original release of The Mummy in England, around five to ten seconds of footage was cut during the hanging scene in the Egyptian prison, including a single line from the prison warden. The cut takes away any footage of Brendan Fraser actually hanging by his neck. This was then added back into the Ultimate Edition. Roger Ebert, a film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, said that "There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it. I cannot argue for the script, the direction, the acting or even the mummy, but I can say that I was not bored and sometimes I was unreasonably pleased." Jess Cagle of Entertainment Weekly said that "And it should be said that no one handles this kind of stuff with more aplomb than Fraser. Handsome in a funny way, swaggering in a goofy way, Fraser gooses the movie with his deft comic timing." Stephen Holden from The New York Times wrote, "This version of ''The Mummy has no pretenses to be anything other than a gaudy comic video game splashed onto the screen. Think Raiders of the Lost Ark with cartoon characters, no coherent story line and lavish but cheesy special effects. Think Night of the Living Dead stripped of genuine horror and restaged as an Egyptian-theme Halloween pageant. Think Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy grafted onto a Bing Crosby-Bob Hope road picture (The Road to Hamunaptra?) and pumped up into an epic-size genre spoof." The Mummy holds a 53 percent "rotten" rating at Rotten Tomatoes and a 48 Metascore at Metacritic. This article has not yet been cleaned up, finalized or edited to fit the style of RICKIPEDIA. 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